26 October 2000

Charities Board Annual Report shows record investment in communities across the UK

The National Lottery Charities Board's Annual Report 1999/2000, laid before Parliament today, shows that in 1999/2000 the Charities Board awarded a record total of 11,347 grants worth £450.6 million. Over the five years in which the Charities Board has been making grants to benefit some of the most disadvantaged people in the UK, it has awarded more than £1.76 billion to more than 36,000 charities and community and voluntary groups.

Charities Board grants reflected the diversity of voluntary activity across the UK today. They include large sums to hospices and national charities and small amounts of money to grass-roots projects, like youth clubs, toy libraries, language courses for refugees, senior citizens' clubs and village halls. Whatever the size of grant these awards made a measurable difference to a huge range of communities.

The Annual Report highlights some of the people who have benefited from Lottery money. Major developments during the year included:

• Decision-making was made more local, as Charities Board's Regional Awards Committees in the nine England regions were given new powers to award grants up to £1 million in their regions
• Grants totalling £24.6 million were awarded under the Health and social research programme, covering a wide variety of medical and social research projects, and grants worth £32.7 million were awarded to UK-based charities working in some of the poorest parts of the world
• The Charities Board's website was relaunched to make it more user-friendly, and particular care was taken with those with visual impairments.

Diana Brittan, Chair, National Lottery Charities Board, said: "I'm proud that since we started five years ago, we have helped thousands of people to improve their quality of life.

"Given that we are pledged to become more customer-focused, more transparent and more accountable, we intend to improve our grant-making by merging together our two main grants programmes and making the application process easier to understand. We plan to introduce a shorter application form for groups of all sizes who want medium-sized amounts of money. We will be launching an ongoing research programme for medical research and social research. We shall be making our application pack available on disk to make it easier to apply, particularly for those with visual impairments.

"To signal these changes we will be introducing a new corporate identity in 2001 to communicate more effectively our purpose, mission and values. We look forward to working with the voluntary sector over the next year so that we can deliver the benefits of these changes."

Media enquiries: Robert Blow 020 7747 5227

Copies of the 1999/2000 Annual Report are available from your local Charities Board office or may be viewed on our website at www.nlcb.org.uk

Note to editors

The National Lottery Charities Board distributes 4.7 pence of every pound spent on the National Lottery to charities and voluntary and community groups. The Charities Board gives grants to help meet the needs of those at greatest disadvantage in society and to improve the quality of life in the community.